Category Archives: child neglect

I have to argue a point with what I am sure is a well-meaning columnist who believes in the sanctity of family and thinks that more often than not children should be with their parents. I do as well…up to a point. What is this all about you wonder? Well, an article I read on CNN by Ruben Navarrette Jr. called “Taking Obese Child from Mom is Wrong.”

Is it really? Is it really wrong to say that to a mother whose child is morbidly obese, weighing more than 200 pounds at 8 years old? Well, according to Ruben it is, because he feels that the child protective agency (CPS) overstepped their bounds. They should have done some other form of intervention besides placing the kid in foster care.

But, Ruben and all who may be reading, there is a problem with what that line of thought. He admitted in his article that the state gave this “mom” a full year to get her ass in gear to start feeding her kid with some sense. They gave her the tools such as pediatric input on what and how to feed her child appropriately and instead of following the guidelines SHE MADE THE CHOICE to continue his 4,000 calorie a day junky, eat what you damn well please, garbage can lifestyle.

How the hell is this not abuse? It tells me that she didn’t care enough for the life of her child when the doctors and everyone else informed her of the life threatening issues that were imminent if she failed to help him. And she did just that, FAILED to help him by choosing to continue allowing him this garbage in system she created.

No one would have a problem if this mom were consistently feeding her kid a meager sustenance of 400 calories a day and doctors called CPS and alerted them that a kid was being starved and that health concerns were imminent. But CPS was called when in this case when the “mom” took her son to the emergency room with trouble breathing. That should have told the dingbat that he had some serious issues coming down the road. Wouldn’t Ruben and everyone else say that the mom was neglectful for not allowing her child to eat healthy?

So, why is it okay for this fool to abuse food just as the starvation mom abuses food, to harm her child? Whether you starve them or stuff them, you are doing something with food that has dire medical consequences for the child, all of which are bad with some being particularly life threatening. We are not talking about a case of a couple snack cakes here and there or a cookie before dinner. We are all guilty of that or something similar. Hell, we are talking about a lady who allowed her kid to eat 4,000 calories of food in a day.

Does anyone know what it takes to eat 4,000 calories a day? Most athletes don’t eat that much, save for the swimmer Michael Phelps. And look how he exercises. She was negligent just as much as the starvation mom. She needed her kid taken so that he may have a chance at health. And she still has a chance to get herself together enough to learn the proper way to feed children, herself and her family.

Let’s stop looking the other way on things like this. He would be up in arms if the story wasn’t about the boy being taken for obesity, but being the youngest kid to die of a heart attack due to obesity. No one would say, it was no one’s fault that an 8 year old died due to his cholesterol filled arteries. We all would be beside ourselves with disgust as we all should be now. And allowing anyone to blame it on ignorance is just plain ignorant. There comes a point in time when all of us know that eating ten big macs a week just isn’t a good thing. Consuming two boxes of cereal every morning is ridiculous.

So Ruben’s attempt at sympathy for a stupid mother isn’t going to fly in my book. Just as sympathy for a stupid mother who didn’t realize that reusing dirty diapers was a bio-hazard that would cause flaming diaper rash, or the stupid mother who didn’t think that playing video games instead of feeding her kids was a big problem, would be unthinkable. So should sympathy for this unfit, unhealthy, unthinkably dumb mother.

This type of thing pisses me off worse than racist people and that is saying a lot. A man walks on a freeway overpass in Hawaii and throws a two and a half year old toddler off thirty feet down. The boy was struck by one or two cars and was pronounced dead at the scene. This type of belligerent stupidity just drives me wild. It drives me just crazy because that poor, poor baby couldn’t do anything to protect himself from the crazy whims of this idiot. I have kids and don’t know exactly how I would react if this happened to my precious little ones.

The 23-year-old man named Matthew M. Higa was arrested shortly after when a witness called police after witnessing him toss the baby. Police said that the man was calm and smoking a cigarette as if nothing was going on. He had been left with the baby by the mother’s boyfriend who in addition with the child’s grandfather was left to watch the baby by his mother who had gone out earlier that day. The mother has to come home and find out that her baby is dead because of irresponsible people. Everyone in the apartment complex where these people and the perpetrator live claimed that this man Higa has always displayed strange and often troubling behavior daily since moving there.

This makes me wonder why anyone with half a brain would leave this schmuck in charge of a dog let alone a precious little baby. Are people that stupid and shiftless or lazy that he couldn’t secure better care for this child other than the apartment complex idiot? Neighbors say that the child had wondered off earlier that day and was returned to his home where other neighbors saw the mother’s boyfriend take the boy to Higa as he has done many times before. Which sounds to me like this was a tragedy in the making. My only hope is that the fall killed him and he didn’t have to suffer the fall “and” being hit by two cars. As of right now there is no official cause of death.

This tragedy not only affects the child or his family. This affects the occupants of the cars that struck the child, the witnesses who saw the man throw the child, the police, paramedics and bystanders at the scene as well as the morgue and not to mention all of the people hearing, seeing and reading about this. The only question left to ask is why, why would this man throw this child to his death. I understand that this is something we may never truly know since this man is obviously crazy.

Higa had been a patient at The Queen’s Medical Center’s psychiatric ward as recently as Dec. 11. Not to mention he has been a suspect in an Aug. 15, 2004 negligent homicide investigation yet charges were declined by the police and he was never arrested. Even though he was quite calm at the arrest he became belligerent and had to be taken back to the mental hospital for evaluation before being taken back to the police station for booking. Which only makes me ask again, why was this fool with that baby?

Yet people will argue that abortion should be illegal and all I can ask is why. Next thing you know you will have more and more ill equipped parents allowing perverts and nuts oversee their children ruining many, many more lives. With so many kids in foster care it isn’t as if there are enough adoptive families to take care of all these unwanted children. This is definitely not a push for abortion rights I am just raising some questions as to what are the pro life people thinking. If we actually cared about children then teens, then adults then the elderly maybe I wouldn’t have a problem with pro life thinking. But at this time we only care about the fetus and then once the child is born who cares not my problem.

Then people are huffing and puffing when those same kids need to have a healthcare bill passed. All of a sudden it is all about them, they don’t want to have to foot the bill for some poor people who can’t afford healthcare. So it would seem that if we stopped trying to make those poor people bring these kids here we could avoid all these other problems as well. Maybe we should also think about the family planning that we are teaching, because obviously this mother didn’t realize that she could just say NO. And now there is an innocent baby’s life wiped out on the freeway. Something has to be done; people need to start thinking and looking at the big picture.

Are people getting dumber or am I just getting more jaded?Sherri J. Lohnstein, 34 of Foley, Missouri is back in court today to plead guilty to involuntary manslaughter by drinking so much that her baby girl who she named Zreanna, was pronounced dead shortly after birth.The baby had a blood alcohol level of .17; Sherri had a blood alcohol level of .18 while the legal limit in Missouri is .08.Now this is a crying shame.I have no sympathy, mercy or whatever for people who make a choice to take drugs and alcohol thus killing their babies.I don’t think I even agree with the involuntary manslaughter charge, hell she knew full well that she should not be out getting extremely drunk while with child.I feel that this is just another in a long line of parents who are using stupidity as an excuse for the reasons they have injured or killed their children.

According to Dr. Mary Case, St. Charles County medical examiner, the determination for the baby’s death had been caused by acute intoxication.At the level that she and the baby were intoxicated she had to have been consuming some sort of hard liquor in which she drank at least 6 drinks over the course of about 3 to 4 hours according to the dui laws calculator.So this crazy mom was doing some serious drinking and I am sorry she knew full well that she was pregnant as she was in her third trimester of pregnancy.So she has no excuse and I don’t even want to hear the fact that she may have been an alcoholic etc.It doesn’t matter if you are an alcoholic get help or don’t get pregnant and if you do then get the help you need.

She posted bond and acting on her own, Lohnstein told Circuit Judge Nancy Schneider on Aug. 28 that she planned to plead guilty in exchange for a five-year prison sentence under an agreement with prosecutors.But the judge had the public defenders office to represent her even though they had previously withdrawn as counsel.She broke into tears in the court room, but I think that she should have been this thoughtful before she decided to go out and get hammered while pregnant.I hope they sincerely throw the book at this woman and hopefully she will be lesson to the next mother thinking about hitting the party scene.But, we all know that the next set of idiots coming behind her won’t learn a thing, because it seems that there is a never ending flow of dumb parents flocking in to do whatever it takes to make them ‘the dumbest’.

As I was surfing the web last night I came across an article about a one year old baby girl who fell out of a window on the second story home of relatives.Teaira Steed’s one-year-old girl, Telea landed head first on the concrete 15 feet below cracking her head and fracturing her face.She was in a coma and took two weeks to come out of it.This is a parent’s worst nightmare, that your child is injured so badly you don’t even know if they will survive.Now I thought this is just horribly tragic, but as I read on I found out that the mother is now suing the person who owned the house as she was staying with relatives who rent.I then became disgusted as I read on.

The mother’s attorney claims that it is the property owner’s fault that the little girl fell from the window because the window had no bars or screens on it.Luckily the baby “seems” fine but who can tell until she is a bit older.Now I am not against suing if you are maligned, wronged, or injured by someone who was being in any way negligent.Because why should you be made to pay for someone else stupidity.But, that said, doesn’t it go both ways why is the property owner responsible for this tragic incident?

Wasn’t it the mothers own ignorance that this situation occurred?So why should the property owner pay for her ignorance of caring for a toddler?Now ordinarily I would be right there with the mother if the child had been left in the care of the property owner and this is what happened.But the child was in the care of her mother when it happened.My question is where in the hell was the mother that a one year old has the opportunity to fall out of a second story window? I don’t care that the mother says she was in the room with other kids at the time, which does not excuse an adult’s supervision; in fact it increases the need for supervision.Not to mention, how the hell, did that baby reach the window, did the mother or other adults realize there were no bars or screens on the window.

Those are all just a few questions that need to be answered before I would bother to give this woman one dime of lawsuit booty.Because it sure sounds to me like the mother was extremely negligent.Why would you allow a one year old to be unsupervised by an adult or much older teen in a room with an open window that has no screen or bars.Also, how many times had she complained her family members who then complained to the property owner about getting these bars and screens?

Now I don’t even know this alderman who owns the property and surely can’t defend him nor convict his character.But, the mother is the one that should be paying the price for what has happened here.She knew that there was no protection on the window and still allowed for conditions to be in place which put a baby in a position to fall from that window.When are people going to start taking responsibility for their irresponsible actions?

Should we all get to sue for being stupid?Gee your honor I sure did know that there was no screens or bars on the window before letting my one year old play in that room before she fell.But you see, she has played in there before and not fallen out the window, so I thought it was safe.But, it’s not my fault I shouldn’t be compelled to actually have to supervise my children, the property owner should have done something so my baby wouldn’t have gotten hurt.I want to sue, can’t I just add my role in this up to ignorance.When did we become such an ignorant bunch of sue happy fiends?No matter what happens it is never my fault always someone else’s and so I have to be paid.

Maybe it’s just me and I am being way too hard on this lady.But, stupidity just rubs me the wrong way.I can not stand to see people use their stupidity for gain and every time I think of this it makes me think back to the McDonalds lawsuit with the coffee.I am too stupid to realize that coffee is hot so I am going to put it between my legs, squeeze it, then get burned and sue about it.Maybe they forced her to put the coffee between her legs the same as the property owner Charles Quincy Troupe, a St. Louis alderman forced this lady to be inattentive to her toddler playing near an unscreened, unbarred open window unsupervised.She is just lucky I am not on the jury, but like I said already, maybe I am just being too hard on her.Maybe I need to be less responsible for my children so that I can sue people too.

Even though children suffer from abuse and neglect equally regardless of race the amount of black children who enter foster care never to be reunited with family nor find permanent homes is much higher than that of white families.Should anyone be surprised by this, of course not, it is the same phenomenon that puts ten times more black men and women in prisons than their white counterparts; which is to break up the black family unit.But I guess we can’t complain too much since not enough of us are standing by to help these families regroup, nor are we becoming the foster parents that we should.

According to the Washington Times, in its report on “African American Children in Foster Care,” the GAO said that in 2004, black children accounted for 162,911, or 34 percent, of the 482,541 children in state care. This is double the proportion of black children in the general child population, the GAO said.

To explain this “racial disproportionality,” the GAO checked to see whether there was more abuse and neglect in black families, but the federal National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect showed that children of all races and ethnicities are equally likely to be abused or neglected. So unfortunately there is no excuse.

The GAO has admitted that there “may” be some bias in due to poverty and race.The question the GAO needs to answer is not why so many black children enter the system; it should be why they aren’t working as hard to get the black families back together like they obviously do for the white families.They are also claiming that the children were placed with relatives of the child’s for foster care.That these families were refusing to adopt the kids or become permanent guardians because, “these people didn’t want to give up the kinship care subsidy.So basically they are saying that they couldn’t help these children and families because of money hungry relatives.So they are now saying that this subsidized guardianship will help them “move” black kids from foster care, because these black families won’t have to forfeit any of the stipend money.

So instead of focusing on the problem that gets black children into the system to system in the first place, lets focus on some negative aspect of the foster “families” and run with that to solve things.Let’s focus on fixing the problems in the black community such as lack of employment, low income, inadequate education, housing and crime which is generally the root of these very same problems.If we were to expend this wasted energy being put into trying to find ways to keep black kids IN foster care, and use it on the things listed above, very small amounts of black children would be in need of foster care. Why not discontinue placing band-aids over deep gashes and actually repair them like we would if those gashes were slashed into the body of a white child.

Here we go again, another young white teacher that sexed up her young student. Jennifer Rice, 31, was arrested Saturday and booked into the Pierce County Jail in Tacoma Washington, which is about 34 miles from Mary Kay LeTourneau and her 14 year old lover from Seattle Washington, for investigation of kidnapping, five counts of first-degree child rape, and four counts of child molestation.

The victim was a 10 year old boy who Ms. Rice was asked to stop seeing by his parents. She had been taking the boy to the movies and having online chats with him when his parents became concerned and asked her to stay away. Then the parents awoke to find that their son was missing from his room his bed had been made to look like he was sleeping. “So sometime during the early morning hours, he disappeared from the house,” Fulghum said. According to court documents, Rice told detectives that she picked the boy up, took him out to breakfast and took him to a waterfall. She said she planned to take him to Idaho, yet after the police called her the boy asked to be left at his uncle’s house in Puyallup Washington and he would make up some story about having walked there.

According to Investigators, Rice admitted that she raped the boy at a rest stop in Ellensburg before driving him back, and court documents indicate that the two had intercourse several times on previous occasions, including once in the boy’s home. The Tacoma School District said, Rice taught at McKinley from October 2006 to April 20, 2007. At that time she was placed on administrative leave while the district conducted an investigation to determine whether she was socializing with her students after school.

There is no excuse for these people; they are in charge of teaching and above all protecting our children. Yet there is an abundance of them who are shirking their duties and becoming the ultimate predators, because our children HAVE to go to them for hours each and every weekday. This is a scary fact that our children are now being taught by a gaggle of pedophiles.

When are we going to start hearing about the “white teacher on child crime” statistics? Because it seems to me that this is out of control. I don’t know how I am supposed to look at my son’s teachers (white females) with any trust. My son might not be safe. Maybe we need a taskforce to start trying to combat this crime or just the way they want to sue gang members and give three strikes and you’ve got life laws, maybe we should be suing and giving teachers who sex down children three strikes and its life as well. Because all of these teachers have admitted to having sex with these students more than three and sometimes up to dozens of times. Also, they seem to go to jail get out and continue sexing the same kid or worse yet give birth to their children. Some of these women are guilty of sexing down girls as well, is anyone safe. Following is a list from MoJunk listing just some of these white female teacher pedophiles. This is not a complete list, but who knows how many of these sickos are out there teaching god knows what to our kids.

Kevin Kelly a Virginia father is spared a lengthy prison sentence after he leaves his daughter in a sweltering hot car for seven hours; the poor 21 month old baby girl had been dead for at least four hours before she was discovered in the backseat by a neighbor.He claims it was unintentional, that he had just forgotten her.Yet in 2004, Tara Maynor was sentenced to 12 1/2 to 60 years in prison on two counts of second degree murder after leaving her two children in a car for four hours outside a suburban Detroit hair salon while she got a massage and new hairdo. She told police she was “too stupid to know they would die.”Just last month, Karla Edwards pleaded guilty in South Carolina, to homicide by child abuse for leaving her 15-month-old son, Zachary, in a car for nine hours in April 2006 while she worked at a home improvement store. When Edwards couldn’t or wouldn’t explain her actions, she was sentenced to 20 years.

I understand that these two ladies actually left their children on purpose and that is the reason for their long sentences, yet I just refuse to believe that you can leave a baby for seven whole hours and claim you forgot.This wasn’t a child that was of an age that she could have been playing alone for hours, this was a toddler who like all toddlers wants to hang out with mom or dad for hours at a time.I don’t know if he left her on purpose because he needed a break or if he left her to get something done THEN forgot about her.Either way I feel he should pay the same price as these other two idiots.I don’t believe that judges should be lenient one day and tough another, because there are still other cases of kids being left by accident and the parents or caregiver had the book thrown at them, so why this man is getting off light, I will never understand.

Apparently the court feels that mothers should be held to a higher standard as men, which is totally bogus.Why do dads get to be forgetful while the mothers are neglectful?This type of thing is common sense for everyone not just mothers.It seems to me that Ms. Edwards who left her child in the car to work might have had daycare problems, I have heard many cases like this one but still not an excuse, but Ms. Maynor what can you say to her except agree with her own assessment that she is extremely stupid and also not an excuse, and sorry no excuse for Mr. Kelly as well.These people treated their poor children as if they were as disposable as the diapers that were on their tiny butts.Anyone who is dumb enough to leave their child (who is too young to care for themselves) unattended especially in a smoldering hot car, should pay the maximum price for their crime.A crime that is exactly what it is, not an accident, not forgetfulness and it’s damn sure not excusable.